MLA President on MOOCs

In a New York Timesletter to the editor, MLA President Marianne Hirsch responds to Thomas L. Friedman’s article on the potential of massive open online courses (MOOCs). While acknowledging that MOOCs may expand access to university curricula, Hirsch warns that current models provide a narrow range of perspectives. She argues instead for cultivating “a multitude of professors with different views who can share deep critical thinking in a community of learners such as only the embodied experience of the classroom can yield.”